


(In)finite

by marauder_in_warblerland



Category: Glee
Genre: Episode 5x17 reaction, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauder_in_warblerland/pseuds/marauder_in_warblerland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt knows what's coming and he knows that Rachel's Broadway debut can't be about him, so he prepares. (Reaction fic for 5x17)</p>
            </blockquote>





	(In)finite

He expected the song to hurt.

There wasn't any reason why it wouldn’t. We're talking about Broadway and Rachel and a bombastic song about undiscovered glory. He knew that “The Greatest Star” was going to sting in sensitive places he tried to keep hidden, so he’d been quietly preparing himself for weeks. Between regular classes and new workouts with Blaine, he’d started policing his own mind— watching for signs of creeping insecurity.

Once, he almost called his dad to talk about it. He doesn’t know what he would have said. He ended the call before the first ring, dropped the phone on the kitchen table, and left before the urge could come rushing back. His dad wouldn’t have understood anyway.

He might have remembered Kurt’s frustration after the auditions senior year, or how he’d been so tired of being—what felt like—the biggest unicorn on the planet, but Burt wouldn’t have understood the rest. Kurt had never told his dad how he ran into the bathroom and cried when Coach Beiste mocked the very thought that he could play straight. He remembered thinking that she should have known better. She was different too, but there it was; Kurt Hummel was always going to be “too much of a lady” to woo pretty women under the stars.

Of course, Blaine was completely out of the question. They were just finding their way back to a balance after the whole stage combat fiasco, and he wasn’t about to bring Blaine’s _West Side Story_ guilt back over some stupid song.

Blaine probably wondered what was happening when the good luck charms started reappearing around the loft. He watched, silently, as Kurt touched his nose and paired his wardrobe with an endless supply of blue socks. Sometimes, when Blaine looked for too long, Kurt felt a twinge of self-reproach, but talking about it wouldn’t have helped anyone. Someday, Kurt planned to tell him everything, but not while he was busy trying to hold himself together with both hands. Maybe Blaine assumed all the lucky charms were for Rachel or maybe he didn’t ask because he just didn’t want to know.

So, Kurt prepared alone. Before opening night he appointed himself stage manager of Rachel’s emotional stability, and no one fought him for the job. Of course he’s always loved Rachel and she needed someone to drag her away from the theater forums, but he couldn’t deny that taking care of her also gave him something useful to do. He was throwing away errant newspapers and texting Santana about Rachel’s mental state, so he couldn’t remember other things. He couldn’t think back to the nights he’d spent reliving his audition and feeling the humiliation in his bones.

By the first performance he was ready, or as ready as he could have been. He settled into the seat between Blaine and Sue and focused everything he had on Rachel’s radiant face. She was two, maybe three, bars past Sue’s horrifying exit before he realized that something else wasn’t right. He couldn’t breath, and—what’s worse—he couldn’t figure out why.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d been so ready for high-school Kurt to come crashing back to the surface, muttering about “his turn” and looking for chinks in Rachel’s armor. Grown-up Kurt brought a flask of Bullet Bourbon to silence that ghost of his past, but he didn’t know how to deal with the breath-stealing creature that actually emerged. This Kurt wasn’t jealous, and for the first time in weeks, a sick sort of anxiety wasn’t burning its way through his gut. Somehow, he hadn’t turned into the emotional child he’d prepared for and yet, at the same time, he wasn’t numb. He had feelings all right, millions of them at once, but they kept slipping out of his grasp.

It isn’t until later, at the club, that Kurt puts a name to his own breathless wonder. A remix of “Shiny Disco Balls” thrums in the background as Santana writhes against his back and Blaine grinds his ass, slow and tight, against his cock. Hands slip around his arms, his waist, his back, from every side and he leans into them all, feeling the weight of a dozen bodies pressing into his own. He doesn’t know whose hands they are and he doesn’t care.

Some old version of Kurt might have worried about strange fingers against his skin, but right now, he isn’t just some new version of himself. He isn’t just Kurt; he’s Blaine and Santana and Mercedes and all of the nameless hands all at the same time. As he rolls his hips from body to body, Kurt Hummel is infinite. He could swear that he feels Santana’s hands swipe past Blaine’s shoulders and up Sam’s back, because they’re all his hands, his shoulders, and his naked, sweaty skin. He’s made anew in the crush of pumping blood, and the new Kurt is so much more than one man.

Rachel squeezes past a line of shirtless boys to reach their side of the club, hair bouncing in time to the music. She spots Kurt in the middle of the clump of bodies, and when she smiles, wide and toothy, Kurt knows why he never needed his flask. It happened at the show too, he thinks. Whatever alchemy of love and desire lets him out of his own skin under the strobe lights, was first created in the concert hall. In that moment, during that song, he wasn’t jealous because he was up there on that stage too. He was Rachel and Sam and Tina and every other body in that theater, loving and being loved.

Kurt had always told himself that a victory for Rachel or Blaine would be a victory for their entire Bushwick family. He’d repeated the line like a mantra, until the worlds flowed together in a meaningless blur. It felt like a nice thing to say when Blaine or Rachel lost themselves in the city, but tonight, for the first time, he really believes it. They’re a tribe of lost Midwesterners, running the race together and, now that he knows, he can’t breathe for the beauty.


End file.
